The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
On my way out west to see family, I found great escapist distraction in Frank Langella's memoir "Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women as I Knew Them" When the book was first released earlier this year, I thought it sounded so distasteful so I didn't pick it up. As it turns out Billy Held an Oscar wouldn't let me go without reading it and sent me a copy as an early birthday gift. Thanks, Billy!
Frank Langella in his first flushes of fame. The book is about dead celebrities he met.
I hadn't realized that Langella was only talking about dead celebrities -- sorry, no shacked-up-with-Whoopi Goldberg or Frost/Nixon chapters! -- and I can't decide if that makes the sometimes unflattering anecdotes more wonderful or more distasteful. Probably both. Initial reservations aside the book is well written and a real page turner. Langella even predicts and silences most "they can't defend themselves!" criticisms with a clearly stated prologue, including this bit:
Separate and diverse individuals as they may be, my subjects have in comon the inevitable outcome awaiting us all: to live only in memories. In this case, mine.
I admit that they are most likely prejudiced, somewhat revisionst, and a tad exaggerated here and there. But were I offered an exact replay of events as they unfolded, I would reject it. I prefer my memories.
I am forcing myself to read the book very slowly so as not to exhaust all the juicy anecdotes quickly. I still have a lot to read but my favorite story thus far is remarkably not about a movie star at all but about the movie starriest of American presidents John F Kennedy, who Langella met when he was all of 15 at a rich friend's parent's brunch. Langella, who is now 74 has a wealth of material to draw from given that his showbiz career started as a teenager and he's achieved success on the stage, in film and on television.
Nothing shocks Bride of Frankenstein Elsa Lanchester!
75 years ago today Jean Harlow died. The Platinum Blonde superstar, arguably the ur blonde bombshell that Marilyn Monroe gets the bulk of the credit for being, was only 26 years old. She'd been a sensation since the age of 19 when Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels (1930) premiered. I loved the Scorsese-directed Hughes bio The Aviator (2004) when it premiered because of its handsome snapshot of Old Hollywood Glamour but I never quite understood what Gwen Stefani was doing playing Harlow. I couldn't see the resemblance beyond hair color and anyone can have that; Platinum Blonde does not normally occur through natural means!
When I was a baby cinephile and more familiar with Old Hollywood giants from their still photos than their actual work, Jean Harlow's huge fame and legendary sex appeal confused me. I thought she looked... odd and weirdly masculine (maybe it was the nose and chin? or maybe just my youth). Definitely not "beautiful". But I learned quickly that traditional beauty, both the male and female variety, is often flat onscreen. Screen presence always trumps beauty. Even the most famously beautiful movie stars are famously beautiful because their screen presence augmented their beauty, permanently burning it into the collective consciousness.
Leo & Gwen as Hughes & Harlow in THE AVIATOR (2004)
That's a lesson that unfortunately many casting directors and studio executives have never learned. This is especially true on television where entire shows are populated with "beauties" but you can instantly forget what everyone looks like by the time the credits are rolling in the sidebar as commercials for the next whatever play. It's especially true on networks like the CW and for whatever reason it always reminds me of those legendary stories about the casting of X-Files. Many executivesdidn't want Gillian Anderson because she wasn't "hot" enough but an interchangeable pretty blonde that would be easy to imagine doing photoshoots for men's interest mags, would never have seized the public imagination like Gillian did as Agent Scully. But I digress!
Seeing the pre-code movie Red Dust (1932) cured me of all Harlow doubts, since her carnality still reads as so immediate, unwithered by the passage of time.
Doesn't it feel sometimes as if being a Movie Star was more of an Occupational Health Hazard in earlier cinematic decades. So many film stars died young: James Dean (24), Jean Harlow (26), Rudolph Valentino (31), Carole Lombard (33), Marilyn Monroe (36), John Gilbert (38), Natalie Wood (43), Monty Clift (45), Stephen Boyd (45), Judy Garland (47), etcetera. Or is it merely that those who die young stick in the memory, filed under What Could Have Been.
They say it's your birthday.♬ ♩♬♩♬ it's my birthday, too.
Herewith, in semi off the cuff order, the greatest peoplethings born on this day in history. Happy June 6th!
Honorable mention... Jason Isaacs -The impossibly hot 49 year old actor studied to be a lawyer but if he had stuck with it we would have never had his Captain Hook, or his Lucius Malfoy, or his bickering married screenwriter in Friends With Money, or even known who he is. Tragedy averted.
VC Andrews - not for writing the ridiculous "Flowers in the Attic" but for inspiring the ridiculous genius of Parker Posey's Waiting for Guffman scene in which the brilliant comic actress uses it for her small town theater audition.
"and who's on top and who's on bottom now? Huh?!"
TOP TEN JUNE 6TH BIRTHDAY PEOPLETHINGS!
10 Levi Stubbs From the Four Topps to Audrey II. I ♥ Little Shop of Horrors, don't you.
09 Chantal Akerman I feel such guilt that I still haven't seen Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
08 Billie Whitelaw She hasn't appeared in a movie since Hot Fuzz but the BAFTA winning actress and Samuel Beckett muse has been giving it on stage and screen since the 1950s in everything from Quills, to Hitchcock's Frenzy to Charlie Bubbles and was even the voice of crazy ass eyeball dropping muppet astronomer Aughra in The Dark Crystal.
Fun trivia: Billie Whitelaw played the evil nanny of that little toddler Anti-Christ in The Omen, whose birthday was also June 6th. Not So Fun Triva: When I was little I snuck into the living room to watch The Omen on TV by myself. I was so scared I could barely sleep for the next two nights and since I was also a June 6th baby, I had to search my scalp for the mark of the devil afterwards!
07 TETRIS! The video game turns 28 years old today. Nine time out of ten its geometric puzzle descendants are the cel phone apps that I accidentally become obsessed with. I would have placed it much higher but for all the months of my life it has consumed... and for what?
I'll never have those months back! Curse you Tetris.
06 Aaron Sorkin For A Few Good Men, The American President, Moneyball and especially The Social Network. If he cared a little more about writing great female characters to go with his tremendously interesting male characters he'd be just about the perfect screenwriter.
05 Aleksandr Pushkin For being such a crucial figure in Russian and, hell, world literature. The Russian noble and poet's legacy can't be denied. He even inspired one of the great Oscar Best Picture winners Amadeus (1984) with his short work "Mozart and Salieri"
04 Harvey Feirstein The inimitable croaksqueak voice, the great wit, the wonderful plays and movies, the multiple Tony Awards, the homo bravery. Such a trailblazer, such a great performer and man. Edna Turnblad (#2) forever! See: Torch Song Trilogy, La Cage Aux Folles, The Sissy Duckling, and more.
03 Sandra Bernhard For her Oscar nomination worthy brilliance in King of Comedy (1983). For one of the best and bravest concert films of all time Without You I'm Nothing (1990). And for just being her own inimitable self. The best stars are always irreplaceably singular.
And though the Sandra/Madonna days are long gone *sniffle* I just have to share my single favorite talk show appearance of all time... I watch it at least once every couple years. It is serving up 1988 authenticity. It is time machine realness.
02 The drive in movie theater! For reals. On June 6th, 1933 the first one opened for business. Thank you New Jersey. I have rarely been to the drive-in in my life but I love the concept and I love drive-in scenes in movies even more than the concept.
The first movie I ever saw at a drive-in was this (incidentally the only time I ever remember my mom and dad taking me to the drive in *sniffle*) and the best time I ever had at a drive-in was this (college was so fun. sigh) and the last one I ever saw was this. Point being: it's hard to forget going to the drive-in.
me, plotting eternal youthful middle age01 Me I'm turning 40 (ugh). Again! I'm so happy that people can legally discriminate against me in the job market now. Wheeee. If you'd like to soften the blow, take the subscription rush challenge and I'll see you again on June 30th.
Since Wisconsin's citizenry tried to ruin my birthday last night I'm turning to actresses for solace, as I am wont to do: An Evening with Jane Fonda tonight and Jane Krakowksi live this weekend. Yes.
* an earlier partial version of this article was accidentally published last night. It's complete now.
Have you wondered what happened to our series Mad Men @ The Movies? Well, Matthew Weiner and his team up and ditched the abundant movie references for most of season 5, leaving me to wish that I hadn't required movie references in order to write about the Sterling Draper Cooper Pryce worker-bees each week. Last week's "The Other Woman", a queasy game changing episode is the instant classic Season Five episode but for our purposes The Other Women this season on Mad Men are TV and Music (particularly the Beatles) which have stolen the pop culture referencing thunder from the movies.
Ratings and cinema references may be down (the former an obvious risk when a series disappears for long stretches) but quality, thankfully, isn't. Not at all. The finale is next week on June 10th, an exhaustive television evening given that True Blood returns and it also happens to be Tony Awards Night and I also have a birthday party to attend...
The much despised Betty Draper Francis. Still one of the most fascinating characters on television.
Thursday, June 7, 2012 at 12:40PM 
Frank Langella in his first flushes of fame. The book is about dead celebrities he met.
Nothing shocks Bride of Frankenstein Elsa Lanchester!
